In the 2014 presidential election, Prabowo carried both Bekasi and West Java. President Jokowi has devoted much time and energy to winning back the province in 2019.

On April 17, 2019, Indonesia will be going to the polls. West Java, the country’s most-populous province, with 48.6 million inhabitants, is the pre-eminent electoral battleground.

Back in 2014, Joko Widodo lost the vote-rich prize to his nemesis, the former general Prabowo Subianto by a huge, twenty-point margin. Ever since then, he’s made the homeland of the Sundanese people a key target, lavishing the region with a succession of critical infrastructure projects, from new airports, railway lines, LRTs, dams and highways.

Will Jokowi, who has promised to improve infrastructure, be able to take West Java and secure re-election, or will it remain with Prabowo?

Has the small-town mayor-turned-president, (popularly known as “Jokowi”), managed to claw back support? Will the selection of an ulama (cleric) – Ma’ruf Amin – as his running mate address the constant carping over his Islamic credentials?

To get a sense of the mood, I’ve been hitting the ground with Team Ceritalah in the West Javanese city of Bekasi, spending time with thirty-eight-year-old engineer and activist-turned-school-teacher Saputro Dwi.

Saputro Dwi believes that Prabowo will be able to bring about the economic change that Indonesia needs.

Political allegiances in Dwi’s tiny, 60 square metre home are complex – indicative, no doubt of the electoral terrain across the province.

Both he and his father, Marijo, are diehard Prabowo supporters. His Central Java-born mother is a fan of Jokowi. However, his wife (whom we did not get to meet), while encouraged by her husband to choose the former general, has remained steadfastly neutral.

Now if you ask anyone in Jakarta about Bekasi – the city and district – a stone’s throw to the east of the capital, they’ll tell you it’s a “long” way from anywhere: hot, boring, possibly just a little dangerous.

The suburbs are generally unlovable. People have always disparaged the Croydons and Jersey Cities of the world.

Marijo bakes and sells cakes in Bekasi and says that he finds it challenging to buy ingredients due to inflation. As a Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno supporter, he believes the opposition ticket will be able to stabilise Indonesia’s economy.

Bekasi is no different. It’s a charmless place, but with a combined population of 6.3 million crammed into almost 1,500 square km, it’s Indonesia’s largest urban centre that you’ve never heard of. It also represents more than 13 per cent of West Java’s inhabitants.

Indeed, Bekasi is arguably Indonesia’s industrial heartland. There are huge automotive factories (from Toyota, Honda and Wuling), warehouses (including Unilever’s largest Southeast Asian distribution centre), shopping malls, apartment blocks and vast housing tracts.

Nonetheless, the area’s agrarian past – hints of what life must have been like before the boom – are never far from the surface.

And on the way to Dwi’s modest home in Rawalumbu (literally “Rawa-lembu” or “swamp full of cows”) I find myself catching glimpses of another world – or should I say another era?

Amid the grimy and oppressive greyness of urban Indonesia – along narrow lanes crammed with jumbled-up homes and tiny warungs (stalls), there are boys on bicycles brandishing fishing rods, goats and fruit trees – tantalising signs of what must have been.

Dwi moved to Bekasi from Jakarta with his parents when he was just a boy. Sitting in his tiny home with a group of children playing noisily in the lane outside, he recalls the rice-fields and streams that were then interspersed with the housing developments.

The province of West Java, where Bekasi is located, is a key electoral battleground for Widodo and Prabowo.

With an artist’s temperament and growing up in the dying days of Suharto’s “New Order” regime, he became an activist along with thousands of others.

His youthful enthusiasms have long since passed. He’s more sceptical of the galloping consumerism that he sees all around him – the world of handphones and gadgets. And whilst he’s an enormous fan of the first president, Sukarno, whom he idolises, he remains unconvinced by Widodo.

“I want change. I want someone who’ll bring the country to a better place. Everyone complains nowadays: it’s difficult to get work and prices are high. That is why I’m drawn to Prabowo. He’s committed to upholding our Kedaulatan [sovereignty] and national security. Besides, we need a leader who was rich before becoming president.”

Indeed, Dwi’s father Marijo [who was born in Madiun] has a strong attachment to Prabowo, having worked for almost thirty years in a catering company owned by a relative of the prominent Djojohadikusomo clan.

“When Prabowo married, my boss’ firm handled the catering. As employees, like it or not, we had to follow the boss and he was a good employer. I was able to bring up a family, buy this house and educate my two children.”

Asked whether he had been able to follow the campaigning, he shakes his head. He’s been too busy with his own work, though he enjoys watching a political debate show called Indonesia Lawyer’s Club chaired by the television personality Karni Ilyas.

However, Marijo’s wife, Semini, a sixty-three-year-old Karanganyar-born lady is a resolute Jokowi supporter. Having benefited from the BPJS (the national health care scheme) and seen the brand-new highways, her admiration has only increased.

Semini has been a Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) supporter ever since he was elected as the mayor of Solo. Her husband and son, however, support the opposition candidate for president of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto.

“I’ve been backing Jokowi ever since he was the mayor of Solo, then when he became governor of Jakarta and later president. Since Karanganyar and Solo are neighbouring regions, my vote is for Jokowi.”

Both Marijo and Semini, however, say the campaign has not impacted their family life. Marijo lets his wife watch Jokowi’s campaign coverage on television and vice versa. They also claim their neighbourhood does not seem to have been polarised either and both agree that they will accept whoever gets elected.

It’s reassuring to listen to the family discuss the polls. Their openness contrasts with the shrill and divisive rhetoric on television and social media.

Indeed, Marijo says Indonesians have a right to vote but must also respect whoever gets elected. They all dislike the hate speech and hoaxes.

So, while allegiances are divided across the republic, at least in one small, 60 square metre home in Bekasi, a family will be getting on with life whoever wins on April 17.